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Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Five years ago, Bjorn Fratangelo won the French Open boys singles title, beating Dominic Thiem of Austria 3-6, 6-3, 8-6, to become the first American boy to claim the title since John McEnroe in 1977. This year he will be playing in the men's main draw for the first time after winning the USTA's French Open Wild Card Challenge, which concluded today for the men in the first round of the $50,000 Tallahassee Challenger.

Fratangelo, who reached the semifinals of the $100,000 Challenger in Sarasota two weeks ago and won the $50,000 Savannah Challenger on Sunday, could only be caught by Jared Donaldson, and when Donaldson lost to Calvin Hemery of France today in the first round, Fratangelo officially clinched the wild card. Fratangelo went on to lose his own first round match to Quentin Halys of France, but that result was not pertinent to the wild card, although it crimped Fratangelo's hopes of moving into the ATP Top 100.

In my post on Fratangelo's title in Paris, a dispute arose regarding a quote that appeared on the French website, which engendered some additional comments on the unlikelihood of anyone quickly moving through the ATP rankings into the Top 50. Since then, Borna Coric, Nick Kyrgios, Alexander Zverev and Taylor Fritz (who is not there yet) have changed that narrative, which just illustrates once again, that when I think I know something, I probably haven't actually uncovered some basic reality, but rather some trends that may or may not continue.

The ITA released the Division I team and individual rankings today, with the big news the climb of Florida to the No. 1 position, taking over from Cal, who had held the top spot since March 8th, and also was No. 1 for the three weeks after the Bears won the Team Indoor in February. Cal does have a 4-3 win over Florida at home in February and both have lost to Stanford, now ranked 12th.

The top spots in singles and doubles, for men and women, did not change this week.

Bobby Knight has projections for the NCAA team tournament for both men and women at his College Tennis Today blog. Full rankings can be accessed by clicking on the links in the headings below.